every day we head into not knowing what will happen. how do we gauge from day to day whether we are “doing ok”? what are the measurements we will use in each situation to feel whether we are succeeding or not?

did he call me? did i do enough to show how much i cared for her? did i write exactly what i meant to or say the things i should have said? did i try hard enough to make this happen? did i oversleep or undereffort? did i miss a sign along the way that this wasn’t the right path? did i do the wrong thing?

these are the endless questions without real answers and often we beat ourselves up in the process of trying to figure it all out. we negate ourselves by squeezing our humanity out of the picture and hold ourselves up to standards of larger-than-life-ness. we do the same for others. we expect and expect and believe it should be going some other way than it is and that it is somehow my, your, their, our faults that it didn’t turn out the way we thought.

but really we don’t ever know what will happen. all we can do is keep on being ourselves and work to understand what that means and the bountifulness and limitations that reside alongside and inside us. we are limitless, i believe, but we are also not superhuman most of the time. being limitless does not mean that we will not face challenges and major hiccups along the way in discovering our own deepest truths. or those same truths in others.

today might be an amazing day and tomorrow may feel like failure, but why? how can we continue to sit with all of this and remain open on the inside, not closed off to the experience because we’ve already defined it as good or bad?

love, life, career, money, family, friendship, journeys… these are not so simple. but if we remain open enough, we may find so much beauty even in what may feel like pain. and that openness will transform us forever. that opportunity is ripening in every moment. it’s never too late to open and stop measuring.